


Not So Unlikely After All - McHanzo Week 2017

by leoandlancer



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Confessions, Confrontations, First Kiss, It's fine they're emotionally stunted morons they're in love, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-11-15 21:06:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11239203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoandlancer/pseuds/leoandlancer
Summary: Written for the McHanzo Week 2017. Each day has a fun prompt and they'll be posted here.Day 1 - Morning/Night: The first morning McCree ever spent with Hanzo shortly after they met, and then the moment when they started to realize just the mornings weren't enough.Day 2 - Canon Divergence: As members of Blackwatch under command of Gabriel Reyes, Hanzo and Genji are captured by the leader of the powerful Deadlock gang, who has a deal to offer HanzoDay 3 - Undercover/DowntimeDay 4 - Red/Blue: Hanzo tries to deal with the snarl of emotions he's encountering more and more about McCree. McCree comes to find him the one place words won't get in the way.Day 5 - Traditional/UnorthodoxDay 6 - First Date/Domestic LifeDay 7 - The Beach/The Sea





	1. Morning/Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: re-uploaded 07/01 (Happy Canada Day!) with revisions throughout, I hope you enjoy!

Mornings were tough on Gibraltar. McCree wasn't really a morning person. He didn't hate rising early when he had to, nor did he find a thrill in getting a jump on the day. McCree worked when he should, rested when he could, and tried not to work outside in the rain more than he needed. His days were governed more by his opportunities, exhaustion, location and his level of notoriety in the area. It didn't have much to do with where the sun happened to be.

It had been something he had liked and appreciated about Blackwatch. Work got done as fast as was possible without jeopardizing equipment, personnel, or information.  _ When  _ the work happened was up to the operator, and that meant there was a lot of flex to a working day. It was one way Blackwatch had differed from Overwatch, which, under Jack Morrison, had retained a military level of scheduling.

McCree didn't have much use for schedules. Schedules could get in the way of taking advantage of opportunities when they presented themselves.

Fortunately whatever had driven Jack Morrison into hiding as Soldier76 had also driven out whatever in him had delighted in militaristic adherence to the clock. Gibraltar had times for training, meals, briefings, simulations, free time - but all the start times were soft. Soldier76 was refusing to take command and Winston was their leader by default.

And Winston, thankfully, was more of a facilitator than a boot camp sergeant.

McCree had spent years on the run. It hadn't all been running, and it hadn't all been bad. Hell, he hadn't even been wanted for most of it. He had spent many years as the most unwanted wanderer that ever hopped a train. Going back to Gibraltar should have felt like coming home, it should have felt like a well earned rest, like he could go back to living in a warm furnished room without having to break in first. On his first night home, he had woken into his stuffy, tiny, overheated room thinking he'd been buried alive.

So he'd set an early alarm after that and usually woke before the walls of his room started to press in on him. When he woke too early, McCree wandered the base, not letting himself be troubled by locked doors.

The explorations were easy in the earliest part of the day. It was cool, quiet, and McCree could walk the halls, labs and training rooms that he had known so well in his younger days. No one else was up so no one asked where he was going or what he was doing and no one cared that he wasn't sleeping.

He had to remind himself a few times that years had gone by since he had last been here. That the things he saw in the halls were just his memories. That the sight of a young Gabriel Reyes laughing with his head back outside one of the training rooms with Jack Morrison and Ana Amari was just a memory. A memory of when they were all twenty years younger, baby faced, the way he remembered from when he had first met them.

He had to remember he was still here, still whole, and the ghost of himself he saw at the practice range, a teenager with two whole arms and a bandana around his neck and a body still filling out its surprising height, was just a ghost.

The ghosts, his scattered memories, the places where people had lived and worked and held common ground were good company most dark nights. Sometimes he would sit in the abandoned lounge on the ancient couch listening to his own heartbeat and nothing else. Iif he sat still and quiet for long enough he could hear his former colleagues talking around him, the younger versions of his commanders bantering and laughing at one another. He would fall asleep listening to the hum and tick of a base under full power and wake to utter silence. 

The old practice range on the headland was an out of the way spot, and favored by Ana and Mercy since they both worked best at a distance. McCree liked the range too, though his damage over distance wasn’t great. He brought Orisa up the slope one day to join them when she arrived fresh from Numbani. Ana brought Zenyatta, and Mercy introduced Hana to the range one afternoon and stood side by side with her, the two of them firing their little pistols. Widowmaker came and went as she pleased, and Soldier:76 occasionally came when he thought no one else would be up there. McCree didn't know Hanzo used it until he started running into him there more and more.

"Morning," McCree said during the eighth time he saw Hanzo at the range. It was the first time either of them had spoken up here, and it wasn't exactly an accurate greeting. Stars were still visible and morning was a dull smudge on on the eastern sky over the sea. The air was cold and heavy with the slowly falling dew.

Hanzo nodded politely instead of speaking in the dim glow from the decades old lights over the targets. McCree and Hanzo fired down the range without speaking more than was necessary to share the space.

The coldest part of the night was before dawn, and McCree let out a breath that went white in the cold, humid air. He kept his serape for times like this, for the years on the run when you woke to the bone-deep chill before dawn and had to wait in exhausted impatience for the sun to warm you. Hanzo didn't seem to mind the cold, and worked steadily through what was clearly a familiar training routine.

The sun was a bright line on the sea to the east, the light turning the water gold when McCree took a break. The sky was orange, fading up to pink and yellow, then a pale green before darkening to blue. The light was surrounding Gibraltar now, and the sun became a curving arch of gold fire above the water, casting the first shadows of the day. McCree looked up and found all the stars had gone, just Venus and Saturn slowly dimming above him.

Beside him, the now familiar pattern of Hanzo's movement changed. Hanzo rolled his shoulders, tipped his neck from side to side and McCree could faintly hear the pop of the joints settling.

"You come up here every morning?" McCree had been back at Gibraltar for a few weeks now, but he had failed to spend much time with Genji's older brother and would-be murderer. He hadn't really thought that was a problem, or seen any reason to change. Certainly Hanzo hadn't.

"Often," Hanzo replied.

He rolled his shoulders again, and McCree watched the muscles under the long tattoo shift under the skin.

"And you?"

McCree blinked and found Hanzo looking at him over his shoulder. "Not always. I’m not much good at a distance. And I’m not much for schedules."

Hanzo made some noncommittal noise and looked back down the range. The target he had been using was bristling with arrows in an irritatingly regular grid pattern. A curator with a micrometre couldn't have measured the distance between each arrow more exactly.

McCree's target had what looked like a burnt crater in the centre of it.

"I hate mornings here."

McCree hadn't meant to say anything. He had been perfectly happy to leave the silence between them. Hanzo was a former lord of a powerful crime syndicate who had readily committed fratricide and only failed because Angela Zeigler was capable of reviving the goddamn dead. He didn't care about McCree's aversions.

"Oh?"

Hanzo paused, an arrow nocked to the bow string, and he turned back to McCree. Even if he didn’t look like he was hanging on McCree’s words, he seemed open to listening to them.

McCree hesitated. "Back where I come from, the sun comes up hot and clear.” He had been trying to avoid thinking about back where he had come from. "Makes the dust shine. Nothing like this." He gestured at the hazy yellow light over the sea, at the gold spreading on the water, the dark blue sky, the wind knocking mist up from the waves. The sun was fatter than an egg yolk and breaking at its edges.

Hanzo was studying the sunrise, his bow held easy in his hands, tawny orange light on his face. "In Hanamura the sun rises from the mountains on the other side of the valley." He looked down at his hands and scowled. "The light grows before the sun rises above the mountain, and it shines up into the clouds. The whole valley fills with light that casts no shadow.”

McCree could picture it. He used to watch sunrises like that coming up over the gorge. "Sounds nice."

"It's not like this." Hanzo pulled the arrow back to his cheek in one swift, smooth motion, then gave a wordless chuff of irritation. He shot the arrow into the ground a few feet in front of him where it stuck vibrating in the grass, and stood for a while looking down at his target.

"Alright?" McCree wasn't sure why Hanzo had forfeited what had looked to him like a perfectly good draw.

"It’s..." Hanzo scowled, and restlessly rolled his shoulders again.

McCree watched the tattoo as Hanzo shifted his shoulder again. "Too fast?" McCree hazarded.

Hanzo nodded. McCree had noticed that during mock battles or in their simulation matches, Hanzo favored a fast rate of fire, sometimes shooting before he had reached full draw. During practice up here, he moved slowly.

"Accuracy comes from form, form from practice," Hanzo grunted.

As if showing McCree what he meant, he shut his eyes, breathed out, and started again. This time, McCree was able to see that every movement, every breath, every strain of muscle and correction of posture was intentional. The simple act of drawing the arrow took what felt like ages, time enough for McCree to take three or four breaths before the fletching was at Hanzo's cheek. The strain of carrying the weight of the bow at full draw was clear to see in the hard lines of muscle in Hanzo's shoulders.

McCree watched, trying not to move, or breathe, or do anything that might upset the delicate practice he was watching. Hanzo was like a moving statue, suddenly huge and sure, agonizingly slow as the sun crept over them both. Light glinted in the gold of his scarf and washed over his skin. McCree had seen Hanzo do this before. He had been standing beside him while Hanzo went through this exact routine literally dozens of times. But he hadn't been looking before. He hadn't realized that Hanzo let the weight of full draw grow on him, and then held it, and held it, and held it, until McCree could hardly breathe. Hanzo barely moved, the point of the arrow shifted minutely. Then Hanzo released, and the arrow whistled as it shot from the bow. Still moving slowly, Hanzo lowered his arms and eased his shoulders and let his bow hang from one hand again.

"Practice, huh?" McCree said.

Hanzo nodded. He looked stormy, staring at the ground between them and the targets, but he cocked his head to the side, and sighed as he looked up. "Speed can compensate for some defects, but anything can become fast if it's done often enough. Even bad habits, bad accuracy," Hanzo shrugged and glanced at McCree then looked away again.

"Take the time to learn good habits and let speed come from that, huh?" McCree's mouth had burned dry watching Hanzo pouring his focus into his form, the ruthless patience that had shifted the muscles in his shoulders while McCree watched Hanzo hold a heavier and heavier weight for longer and longer.

Hanzo just nodded. He didn't talk much, McCree had noticed that, but he was starting to suspect that was simply because he wasn't used to company. McCree could relate, though he suspected that Hanzo's wariness probably came more from both self inflicted and actual exile, with attempted assassinations thrown in for social engagements now and again. The thought soured in McCree's gut. He didn't pity Hanzo, but for the first time he realized that Genji's death hadn't irrevocably ended just one life. The difference was Hanzo had no one to blame but himself.

"Hanzo," McCree started, then stopped himself because he had nothing he actually wanted to say.

Hanzo blinked, and tipped his head slightly, looking just as threatening as he ever did, with perhaps some defiance in the set of his jaw.

McCree was good at reading physical cues, he was a gambler and a gangster and a member of an intelligence organization that had shrouded the world. Before that he had been a kid growing up through violence, and he'd learned to spot the signs. McCree had assumed Hanzo would be easy to read, like Genji had been, but he was starting to see the opposite. Genji had acted violently, bombastically outward in the old days, rage, grief, drive, confusion, and fear dragging him onwards, barely controllable, never difficult to read. Hanzo turned in though. He turned in and turned cold and his body gave away his tells by what he  _ wasn't  _ doing.

He wasn't leaving. He wasn't letting McCree see him head on either; he kept his left shoulder towards him, his bow between the two of them like it could shield him. But he wasn’t leaving.

McCree nearly did a double take. Hanzo was so haughty and cold and so rarely spoke to anyone. It had never occurred to McCree that Hanzo could be  _ shy _ .

_ Reticent _ , he corrected himself. Hanzo was a lord of a ancient crime syndicate and an assassin and a highly trained, extremely dangerous archer who had killed the best swordsman McCree had ever seen and the fact that it had been his brother hadn't stopped him. Shyness wasn't a trait for someone like Hanzo.

Still, he looked shy in the fresh yellow light of the newly risen sun, standing stubbornly, holding his ground as McCree stared at him.

Waiting for something.

McCree ducked his head. "Listen, I'm not much for schedules, I've mentioned that before, but if you’d welcome it, I'd be grateful to come up here at the same time tomorrow to join you."

The silence stretched a beat too long, then another, and finally McCree looked back up just in time to see Hanzo look away from him. McCree couldn't put a name to the expression Hanzo had hidden.

"Very well," Hanzo said, curt as ever and pulling another arrow loose. "Though we're nothing alike."

McCree bristled, then realized that it might not be an insult, because it sounded almost self deprecating, and their fighting styles were as different as it was possible to be. McCree hesitated, then went on, fishing for a reaction. "Feel like I could learn a lot from you."

Hanzo froze, just for a second, and McCree saw the moment when Hanzo's breathing hitched.

McCree felt his mouth fall open slightly. The sun was up and the light was clear, the warmth of the new day had burned off the dew in the air. New dawn, new morning, and McCree hadn't seen Hanzo until the instant when he had shown he didn't think McCree could learn anything from him.

"Patient man like yourself." McCree was talking on auto pilot, still staring at Hanzo and struggling to contain this new reality. "And I'm always willing to learn from the best."

"You honour me," Hanzo said flatly, suddenly cold. He went back to his practice, arrow drawn into the bow string, settling his feet and straightening his spine.

"I was being serious," McCree said, alarmed suddenly at the coldness in Hanzo’s words. "We've not talked much, archer, but I'd be pleased to if you're willing."

Hanzo looked around at McCree again, breaking his stance though the tension in his shoulders didn't ease.

McCree swallowed, and for the first time in a long time found he was scrambling for something to say. Whatever he was going to say, it had to be right.

"I, well."  _ Shit _ , McCree thought, blanking. He'd talked himself out of being a hostage on two different occasions. He had talked himself into his position in Blackwatch. Hell, he had talked Gabriel Reyes into letting him keep the belt buckle. He had no goddamn idea what to say to Hanzo Shimada. "I'd like it if you'd meet me up here some mornings is all," McCree, master silver-tongued negotiator, stumbled on. He found he was desperate to make Hanzo understand McCree hadn’t been teasing.

"So you said," Hanzo said, still flat, still sure that McCree was a liar with a mean streak and something to prove.

"I can't sleep most nights," McCree blurted. "I was stationed here on and off during the omnic uprising and then... The fall. I can't... Some nights I think..." He had negotiated black market trade agreements in an abandoned hockey rink that had been so profitable his words had affected the economy from Florida to Hong Kong. McCree shut his eyes briefly. This was harder than that had been and he hated that he didn't know why. "I left here after most of the folks stationed here died, got reassigned, made to disappear, and I was one of them. I'm back now and they ain't. I haven't been sleeping much, so it'd be good to have something to look forward to in the mornings."

The tension had gone out of Hanzo's shoulders. He was looking at McCree with a variation of his typical scowl that McCree didn't know how to read. It was softer maybe, or at least curious.

"My brother's here," Hanzo murmured. "I don't sleep so soundly either."

McCree blinked. He had thought that Genji was crazy, inviting his murderer to join them here, but for the first time he considered that Hanzo was sleeping in the same base as a brother he tried to kill. An act he spent every moment since its committal fighting to redeeming himself for. Hanzo had wandered the world until he was so hard to find Genji could only wait until the anniversary of his death to ambush him in their old home.

"So." McCree forced himself to keep standing easy, to move slowly as he pushed his hat back a little, opening his body language because he felt like curling into a ball in a cupboard for the first time since he'd been a child and all because he didn't want Hanzo Shimada to be disappointed in him. He had to be showy about this, genuine in a way that wasn't easy. Had to show and tell Hanzo that he wanted another morning like this. "So I'll see you here tomorrow morning then."

Hanzo looked like he was going to speak, then stopped himself, and nodded. McCree caught a flicker of a smile, or maybe just an ease to the tension he carried around his eyes before Hanzo turned away again. "Tomorrow morning then," he said.

"Yeah, sure." McCree breathed, and fought his smile down while he watched the slow, methodical exactitude of Hanzo drawing another arrow. "Tomorrow morning."

* * *

 

It wasn't easy to leave the island, but Hanzo took every chance he could get and this evening, under the burnt orange light of the setting sun, the barge that brought supplies to the island didn't mind a stow away.

A year. Well, nearly a year since he had come and he still couldn’t sleep easily. A year after sharing a roof with his brother and Hanzo still preferred keeping vigil through until morning. A little less than a year since his mornings had been spent with Jesse McCree on the lonely practice range in the cold before dawn.

Missions and training and traveling and briefings and simulations and every morning, McCree would come to the same stretch of flat rock and scrubby grass on the headland and Hanzo would join him. Together, they would practice their chosen forms. McCree was downright frightening in a way that Hanzo doubted he gave himself enough credit for. The man was a quickdraw and a killer and he had survived so many things that would have felled others. Hanzo didn't know if luck was part of skill, but either way, McCree was very, very skilled.

And charming, easy going, disarming, thoughtful, observant... And he'd perfected each of those qualities until they were practically weaponized. He was dangerous, and Hanzo had thought he was in danger when he first met McCree.

The barge came up alongside the lower docks on the southern side of Algeciras. He thanked the woman and her teenage daughter that ran basic supplies to the base across the bay every week. A year was enough time to build a good relationship with a family who brought groceries at a not unreasonably extortive rate.

Once he was on Spanish soil, he was technically trespassing, and didn't plan on anyone taking a position to point that out to him. He ran. Running was simple, he'd been doing it for more than a decade, and it came easily to him now.

He never had a plan when he came up here. The docks under the town were quiet, and Hanzo skirted the light and anyone he saw, sticking to high ground as often as he could until he reached the open hills to the west of town and could run flat out.

It was more to exhaust himself than anything else. The running felt productive, and the blankness that came to his mind was more effective than meditation. And if it felt like he was running away from his brother, from the uncertainty of his place in Overwatch, from the awkward reserve he didn't know how to break between himself and the few people he had made connections with, that was fine. It wasn't entirely untrue.

McCree, he corrected himself as he caught his second wind and ran through the darkness along a cracked road through a village long since deserted. Fire had gutted the church decades ago, and most of the buildings had shrubs and small palms growing in and out of their windows. Most walls were pitted with rifle fire. Hanzo didn't stop, or slow down, and the distraction of the little dead village ended as he left it, and he was alone with the thoughts of McCree as he ran up through the forest along the hills towards the west.

He hadn't made any connections with anyone here other than McCree, and he was half certain he was imagining that. Pathetic of him, really, grasping at so tenuous a relationship as whatever he had with McCree to be the soul human connection he had made in the last fifteen years. McCree had real friends on Gibraltar, friends who made him laugh and surprised him with thoughtful gifts, remembered his birthday and celebrated his accomplishments, teased him for his mistakes, talked with him. He didn't need to count a scowling, silent archer in their number.

Hanzo wiped sweat off his face and grit his teeth and refused to slow as his thighs and lungs began to ache. McCree stood in the cold pre-dawn most mornings and shot at a target while Hando watched him out of the corner of his eye, and went through the motions of a practice he had mastered years ago. He didn't need the practice. But McCree suggested it become routine. Then nothing changed.

And why should it change? Hanzo lacked courage and McCree had no interest.

The thought that had been dogging him faithfully for the last several months crept up on him again. Hanzo hadn’t stayed in one place for more than a few months for the last fifteen years. Overwatch wouldn't be any different. Whatever Genji had seen in him wasn't coming to the surface. It wasn't going to change the fact that Hanzo wasn't needed here, that he wasn’t needed anywhere. Hanzo had been a boy carved into a lord and he’d failed his first trial as a leader and he would never find anywhere to belong ever again. Whatever Genji was now, he belonged, and Hanzo had been on an opposite vector. The more Genji came into himself, the more Hanzo spiraled out. The more that Genji had made friends and allies, Hanzo was reminded that a year of standing beside someone focusing on a target as the sun rose didn't make a friendship. It didn't make anything.

He passed another gutted town, running through streets shattered and blasted by heavy ordnance and now softened and made shaggy and cool with weeds and creepers growing from the edges and the cracks. The houses leaning sleepily together with their roofs tipped down like the brims of hats.

Hanzo slowed to a jog, and then a walk on the outside of town, and kept going, along the old highway, picking his way around the huge scars the giant omnics had left when they attacked from the sea.

Overwatch was bursting with alarmingly competent snipers. Hanzo didn't bring anything special to Overwatch. He didn't bring anything to them that would be missed when he left.

He finally trailed to a stop on a lookout with a broken carpark and a rusted guard rail between the flat of the road and the forest behind him, and a steep slope down the mountainside towards the sea. Hanzo was panting, his legs aching and his lungs sore. His hands were hot and shaking from exertion as he wiped sweat off his face.

“Pathetic,” Hanzo snarled at himself. Hanzo loved the moment when the sun broke over the practice range and burned away the cold dew from around them. Loved seeing McCree beside him, calm and focused and frighteningly competent. Those moments mattered to Hanzo, but it was nothing to McCree, just cold hours spent while the dew fell cold and sharp.

The night was quiet around him, the chirp and scrape of the insects in the forest behind him, and the cool of the night making the metal in the rusted guardrail give an occasional  _ plink  _ as it settled. Hanzo carefully lowered himself to his knees, looked up at the moon and studied the stars over him. The constellations were always familiar, and the rabbit in the moon still brought him back to Hanamura in the springtime. He and Genji had camped out in the courtyard to escape the heat in their rooms one night, and Hanzo had told Genji about the rabbit in the moon. Far from being calmed by the old fairy tale, Genji had been horrified, and had burst into tears at the thought of a rabbit hurling itself into a fire to feed a stranger.

Hanzo had to comfort him for half an hour, and finally, Genji had seen what his brother had been pointing at all the time, and realized there was, in fact, a rabbit on the moon's bright face. He had slept after that, content to know the selfless rabbit hadn't simply died ignominiously on the flames, but Hanzo had been shaken. Hanzo had always been proud of that rabbit. He'd related to it.

Not that he wanted to offer himself as a meal to a stranger and be thrown into the sky as a reward, but the idea of self sacrifice had appealed to him as a child. The idea that anything was worth a more than its life, if it was brave enough.

Hanzo hadn't been brave since he had met McCree. He hadn't felt brave since he had been a child.

The moon and its rabbit swung a few degrees around the night sky while Hanzo watched it, the air cooled, and Hanzo's breath came back to him. He just needed a reason. One thing to change, and he could go. He was good at traveling now, he was good at making his own way, he was good at being alone. It didn't matter that he hated it.

"You know I don't give you near enough credit."

Hanzo started as violently as if he’d been shot, and was up on his feet reaching for the bow he wasn't carrying.

McCree was ambling towards him up the road, out from the shadow of the forest, looking as bright and quick and alert as he ever did.

“Three thirty in the goddamn morning. You must have been running for hours straight to get this far. I'm not convinced you're fully human. Those dragons carry you part way?"

Hanzo blinked at him in the moonlight. "What?"

"Dragons." McCree gestured to his left arm and pointed at Hanzo. "Nevermind. Anyway, howdy, as I live and breathe, fancy meeting you here, and all that."

"What are you doing here?" Hanzo backed a step, and it felt more defensive than he had intended. He'd just wanted to put some space between them, and try to give himself time to think.

"Looking for you. No one knows where you go when you miss our mornings, but I thought about it and came looking."

"You thought about where I go," Hanzo said flatly. "When I leave the base?"

"Sure." McCree reached him, and stood easily, hands on his belt, hat tipped to one side, his face in shadow with the moon behind him. "But I found you, first try."

Hanzo opened his mouth, shut it again and shifted uncomfortably. "Why?"

"Worried about you," McCree said without a shred of hesitation. "You've been more quiet of late. Been thinking you might be looking to move on from Overwatch so I wanted to have a word with you first."

"No, that is..." Hanzo, confronted with three questions he badly wanted to ask, held up a hand in the face of McCree's comfortable one sided conversation. He heard McCree take a breath, about to keep talking, and Hanzo glared at him and spoke up as belligerently as possible. "I have questions. Three things. Firstly, how did you know where I would be."

"Figured you'd want to go west," McCree replied promptly. "And Spain's closer than Morocco."

"Why west?" Hanzo asked, partly to interrupt McCree on his last syllable and partly because he hadn't known why. West was just easier.

For the first time, McCree seemed to hesitate. "It's away from Japan, technically."

Hanzo was struck dumb by this. In the silence that followed, McCree seemed to feel some unspoken criticism.

"Ain't no secret you've not been back to Japan save for the anniversaries of Genji's near death and those almost always ends in assassinations so..." Something seemed to break inside him, and McCree went on in a rush that sounded almost guilty. "And... When Genji was Blackwatch, he'd always take off running east."

East. Towards Japan. Hanzo felt his chest constrict sharply.

McCree was watching him, and went on when Hanzo couldn’t speak, "You said three questions?" He prompted.

Leaving the blunt evasion for now, Hanzo pushed a hand through his hair and found he was shaking slightly. "Why did you think I was leaving? I've never said anything..."

"No," McCree cut him off. "You don't say much."

That was a spoken criticism, and a lot louder than the unspoken one McCree had caved to. Hanzo stiffened.

"But you're not saying much a lot more than you used to. And you’re not doing much else. You're leaving the island more and more, you've been ready and willing to tell Ana and Widow what a fine shot they are, hell, you've mentioned it to me a few times. You've been reminding people why you ain’t more than spare weight on this happy bus."

Hanzo kept very still, and tipped his head slightly as he watched McCree speak.

"So it got me thinking about why anyone would want to remind everyone listening that they're not much use to man or beast and all I came up with was that you wanted to make sure we didn't have to come looking for you when you up and take off like a thief in the night." McCree was on a roll now.

"Of what?"

That broke McCree's roll nicely. He stumbled as he was about to go on with his diatribe and hesitated. "Come again?"

"You likened me to a thief. A thief of what?"

"That your third question?"

"I have a lot of questions, McCree." Hanzo kept still, and he didn't know what he was getting ready for, but this was starting to feel like a fight.

"It's a figure of speech. Just a figure. What was the third question. You're the one who wanted to stay on topic." McCree shifted uneasily, the first time Hanzo had seen him move without deliberation.

"Why did you come looking for me?"

"I told you I thought I knew..."

"Why didn't you tell Winston? Or Tracer? Or anyone who could have looked more efficiently. Why did you come alone?"

"I am the soul of efficiency." McCree smiled, and his teeth showed in the moonlight like a snarl.

McCree was very, very rarely aggressive, even in battle he was careful, methodical, professional. He didn't take things personally but he was now. Hanzo blinked at him. He was breaking all of what Hanzo understood to be his own rules now.

"Why did you come, McCree," Hanzo asked again. He spoke quietly, and the night breeze swallowed up his words until they were almost too quiet to matter.

McCree heard him though, and again made an uneasy movement he hadn't intended. "I was worried about you," he said, just as quiet, then went on, louder and using the easy tone of voice that disarmed so many people. "Not that you're some responsibility of mine, or that you can't handle yourself, I just thought seeing as I just had a hunch and I didn't like the idea of bothering the others and I was up anyway I'd just take a look myself to make sure you were alright."

It was a good voice, and it was a tone and a rhythm and an economy of words that McCree had mastered. And Hanzo hadn't said much in the last year, but he had been listening. Hanzo had been paying attention to McCree.

"You said you were worried," Hanzo said, talking over the careful, skilled flow of words.

McCree shut up.

Hanzo waited, but McCree kept his face hidden in the shadow under his hat brim and kept himself perfectly still and didn't say another word.

"What was I a thief of, McCree?"

"Back to this again, I told you it's just a..."

"You didn't mean it as a figure of speech," Hanzo said. It was a wild guess, and one he spoke with the certainty of a lord who had been raised to command armies.

And he was right. McCree shut up again, and this time, he stepped back a pace.

Hanzo waited. He had come here, and McCree had followed him, called him a thief and a run-away and told him he’d been worried and if he didn't want to elaborate on that he could go on his way.

"Ha," McCree said at length, his head tipped down slightly. "I guess I should have asked one of the others to come talk to you. Sorry, I just thought... I didn't think I'd mess up so badly."

"Why did you come then?" Hanzo kept his voice steady, but it took effort because there was a danger to this question he hated to consider. This felt like a fight and he didn't know who was winning or what the stakes were.

"I thought..." McCree trailed off again. It was strange to see him lost for words. "I didn't think you'd mind me so much," he said slowly. His shoulders dropped as he spoke, and something in his voice made it sound like he only realized the answer as he spoke it aloud. "I guess I thought you'd hear me out."

Hanzo stared at him, and McCree just shook his head and chuckled.

"My mistake. Sorry for troubling you. Didn't mean to offend, just wanted to let you know that I… I mean, Overwatch is a good place to be, we need you, we need your skills and expertise and we need you with us, supporting us like you have been this year. We need you  _ here,  _ Hanzo."

Something in McCree's tone broke something long pent up and unsettled in Hanzo, and he cut McCree off again. "You do not."

"I do," McCree snapped back at him.

The night went dead silent around them both.

Hanzo thought the words, the context, the conversation over in both languages, struggling to figure out what exactly McCree could possibly mean by that.

"Hanzo." McCree broke the silence between them, his hands were gesturing as he spoke and it was the first time Hanzo had seen that. McCree's body language had been a carefully controlled art until now. "You keep thinkin’ you can leave and we won't be one short but you're wrong. The whole point of Overwatch is we're a team and we can support each other and right now we're a mess. Anyone can see that, but we're pulling ourselves back together. Hanzo, we need you here and you've barely spoken since you arrived and it's only damn chance I met you that morning for target practice and we kept that up because otherwise I'd just be trailing around not knowing anything about you and you deserve a place here. You've  _ got  _ a place here. We respect you and want you to stay and..."

"That's not quite true." Hanzo managed to break into the rapidly spinning double-dutch jump rope game of McCree's hasty talk and gesturing hands.

"It  _ is  _ true, you ornery, self deprecating-" McCree, sounding actually angry now, seemed to gain an inch or two of height.

"I went to the target range because I thought you'd be there," Hanzo cut him off, crashing through the one sided, conversational jump rope before it kept on turning away from him.

McCree's mouth snapped shut and he leaned back again. Hanzo stared at him, blinked, and swallowed painfully. His mouth was dry and he wished he hadn't said that.

"I... You.." McCree started, stopped, then pulled his hat off and ran a hand through his hair. "I thought you were practicing. Form and accuracy and speed and all."

"I was," Hanzo hedged, then caved, "But I didn't need to. I doubt either of us needs practice at that level. I just wanted..." This didn't feel like a fight anymore and Hanzo had no idea what to do or say. "I saw you up there sometimes in the early morning. I wanted to talk to you."

"Oh, hell," McCree said and he'd never sounded blindsided before, or this uncertain. "Hanzo."

"It was foolish," Hanzo agreed, posture stiffening and already ripping through a mental inventory of everything he had left on Gibraltar and writing it off. He could make it to Portugal by nightfall and it would be easy to take ship from there to the Azores where he could scrape together enough dignity to go on. He wasn’t going back to Gibraltar now. It was a shame he didn’t have his bow.

"No." McCree was leaning forward again, hands between them and this time he reached for Hanzo. McCree froze as he seemed to realize what he was doing. "No it wasn't I was glad I saw you up there." He seemed to notice his hands had been acting without his express permission and he tucked his thumbs into his belt again. "Truth to tell, I didn't know what to say to you. I scarcely got the nerve to ask if we could meet again, never felt so tongue- tied in my life. I barely..."

"You? Tongue tied?" Hanzo couldn't resist the comment.

McCree snorted and looked down, hiding his face under his hat brim. Hanzo's face felt hot and his pulse was up. It still felt like a fight, and McCree still hadn't answered his question.

He took a breath, and asked it again, "You called me a thief, McCree. What was I a thief of?"

McCree looked up at him, eyes glinting bright in the darkness, looking at Hanzo with a long stare that made Hanzo tense and he had to stop himself for backing off a step.

"McCree." Hanzo wished he knew what was actually being said here. He wished he knew why McCree had come alone to find him, wished the answer wasn't as ludicrous as the one he was hoping for.

"Shoot, I can't say," McCree said. For the first time all year, Hanzo heard McCree’s voice shake. He tipped his head down again, and seemed to withdraw slightly.

This time, Hanzo didn't push him. He wouldn't ask again.

"Hanzo." McCree seemed to pick his words, and went on. "Overwatch needs you right where you are. That's no platitude, it's a fact. You leave and we'll be vulnerable. But more than that, Genji needs you here, more than either of you want to admit, I'll wager, and I... I enjoy our time together, archer, and like you said, neither of us need the training, so I guess you don't mind me too much?"

The last sentence came out like a question, and Hanzo was still reeling from McCree pointing out his own words. Neither of them had needed the morning practice on the distance range on the headland.

"We both went to practice," Hanzo said, the realization dawning on him and making his skin go hot, "to have each other's company." 

What the hell did McCree enjoy about his company? Hanzo scrambled inside his own head, looking for a reason anyone would spend time with him.

"Seems like it." McCree was watching him again, peeking from under his hat brim.

The night was cold around them, the dew was falling and the stars were bright overhead. It felt like the start of their morning practice, the cold before dawn, when it wasn’t morning or night, but something else.

Hanzo finally turned away from McCree, looking out towards the east where the faintest smudge of grey showed the line where the ocean ended and the sky began. McCree came to stand next to him, tense and uncertain, but relaxing by increments until they stood in companionable silence, looking out at the ocean and the moon overhead.

"I've been thinking about you most nights," McCree murmured after a while.

The world around them was still dark and quiet, the dew felt cold on Hanzo's skin. There was no colour in the light of the moon that wasn't tinted silver and slightly faded. McCree's serape was the only colour Hanzo could see in the darkness.

Hanzo found he couldn't really speak, and his skin had gone hot again under the chill from the dew.

"I mean, I..." McCree seemed to catch himself and fumbled again. "I'm still not sleeping so well at night, too quiet, but it's nice to know I'll get to see you soon. You seem to like the nights."

"They're quiet, and empty," Hanzo managed. "People leave each other alone."

"Mostly," McCree said with a smile and a little self-deprecating nod at himself.

"Mostly." Hanzo chuffed an unexpected little laugh he couldn't stifle.

"I like having our mornings to look forward to," McCree said. 

He shifted, awkward again and Hanzo glanced at him. He was looking out towards the east where the darkness was barely turning grey. "Nights don't last so damn long when they remind me of you."

"You're like the sunrise," Hanzo said, staring at McCree’s profile. If he had the foresight to know he would say something that idiotic, he would have bitten his tongue off to stop himself. 

McCree swung around to look at him in flat astonishment and Hanzo wondered about his chances of making a run for it.

"I like the idea of that," McCree said. He was talking quiet and fast, and he didn't move.

Hanzo had to admire just how completely McCree could control the impression he gave others. It was enough to make him hesitate.

"Listen Hanzo." McCree kept his voice low, kept his posture relaxed. "If you want to leave Overwatch, no one's going to keep you here against your will but I'd like it if you stayed."

McCree was like sunrise. He crept up on you from the cold of a long darkness and changed the world around you so slowly you couldn't notice the individual changes until your entire life was altered and only getting better with time. McCree had come up on Hanzo slowly, and filled his time with Overwatch with light and warmth and energy. It happened every morning and it was something Hanzo didn't want to run from.

"I don't belong here," Hanzo said slowly, trying to find words that McCree would understand and failing. There was no way to tell McCree that Hanzo had been born and groomed for a place of power, and a handful of misfits, omnics, a gorilla and whatever McCree was wasn't anything Hanzo had been trained for. "But I want to."

The last part came out and surprised him. He hadn't voiced that confession in his own mind, but it was easy to tell McCree.

"So stay." McCree moved; a tiny, involuntary gesture as he reached briefly towards Hanzo, his right hand, skin and bone and warm brown leather. He stopped himself but Hanzo found that he wished he hadn't.

"I wasn't leaving," Hanzo said, stifling his idiocy and straightening slightly.

"Not this time." McCree clearly understood what a literal practice run looked like when he saw it. "Listen, if you really want to go, just come to me first, ok? Let me try and talk you out of it. Let me say goodbye."

He didn't want to say goodbye to McCree. The idea tripped him up slightly. He reached out, realized what he was doing and stubbornly didn't stop himself. He tugged on the edge of McCree's serape and held on for a moment.

“Alright.” Hanzo let the warm fabric trail out of his fingers. “Come, let's go home," Hanzo said.

McCree seemed to be holding his breath.

It was still the dark of night, the horrible cold hour before dawn starts to show itself when the dew is cold and heavy and the sky is as dark as it ever gets. The wind was rising as McCree and Hanzo started back down the long road towards Gibraltar, and the tide was starting to ebb. It was a long way back to their island, and the sun would rise in front of them and warm them through and turn the sky ahead of them to a sherbert coloured wall that would slowly turn to blue. For now though, they were at the place where it was neither the cool, quiet night or the warm morning, it was just the two of them hurrying home together through the cold and the dark, towards something warmer and brighter than the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read by the incredibly patient [emotionalmorphine](http://emotionalmorphine.tumblr.com/)!! Who was incredible. I was in a hurry to post these and so I'm really happy to have the time now to go over them with great beta reading.<3  
> [I'm on Tumblr!](http://leoandlancer.tumblr.com) Please come say hi if you'd care to stop by!


	2. Canon Divergence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: Re-uploaded 07/01 with revisions throughout!! I hope you enjoy <3

Hanzo had expected to find Deadlock in one of the four or five locations that he and Genji had discovered during their reconnaissance with Reyes. He was surprised to wake up to discover the reason Deadlock was so well hidden was because it was in all it’s locations, very nearly simultaneously.

The steel tipped toe of a boot connected with the small of Hanzo's back and he didn't flinch, didn't alter the shallow pattern of his breathing or make a sound.

"Out cold," an American accent, so heavy it almost sounded like an affectation. "How's the other one?"

"Same," another American, and Hanzo barely managed to restrain his relief. At least Genji was alive.

The train howled ahead of them, and the shudder and rattle of the car jostled Hanzo where he lay. No light showed through the windows, and there was scarcely any light inside. They just used ancient oil burning lanterns with linen wicks that swung and flickered from the curved roofs of the cars. The train ran on diesel and used actual wheels on actual rails, and it was so appallingly low tech that Blackwatch's finest operatives had no earthly idea it existed until a few moments ago.

There was nothing to track with tech stooping this low and Hanzo was frankly annoyed that Blackwatch had managed to evade them so effectively.

The door at the head of the car rattled as it rolled back and a new voice called in, "Get him up, boss wants to see them both now."

"They’re both still hard out," one of Hanzo's guards replied.

A brief pause that could could have been a shrug. "Bring him anyway. Boss'll wake him."

The sound of the wind outside the car, the rattle and chatter of the train and the roar of the engine ahead of them was a great deal louder with the door open. It faded abruptly when the messenger rattled the door shut when he left.

They didn't even carry comms on this train, Hanzo realized. They didn't carry a single piece of technology that could be tracked or traced. It was infuriating. It probably meant the reason Hanzo hadn’t been able to find a paper trail for this gang was because it was actually made of goddamn  _ paper. _

Hanzo had been hunting the Deadlock gang for more than a year, and Genji had been assigned to help him after six months. Together, they found so little Commander Reyes had taken an interest in their ongoing frustration weeks ago. Between the three of them working long and hard at tracking Deadlock, they had discovered that it existed. Probably

All this time, Deadlock had been on a diesel fired train running through tunnels lit by oil lamps using a messenger boy for comms and a hard-cover ledger for their international business dealings. Hanzo seethed.

And now he was going to be dumped in front of the boss of this organization and probably killed by them.

"Take his left arm," one of his guards spoke over him, and Hanzo kept himself still. "I'll take his right."

For an instant, Hanzo considered what Reyes would term 'direct action’. He would probably win, even if he was bare-handed, and it wouldn't take long, but he still had to find Genji, and he was still holding out hope that Reyes was alive. He kept himself limp as his guards dragged him upright and drapped him between them, Hanzo's arms held over their shoulders.

They weren't even that rough with him. Which was surprising since when most gangs find a spy rooting furiously through crates of stolen weapons with several thousand dollars worth of diamonds on his person, they usually beat said spy to death's door and leave them bleeding on the welcome mat. Double that if aforementioned spy does not, in any way, go quietly when asked to surrender. 

It wasn't a long trip, down the length of their train car and through the the rolling door onto a steel platform between the two swaying cars. It was dark, and the warm, stale air of the tunnel around them tore at Hanzo's hair and made his breath short. Through another sliding door and down another car with bunks against one wall and lockers along the other. There were a few tables tied up against the walls which would swing down, and crates and chests for seats. Through there, and over another bridge of steel where the rails flashed briefly in the light of the lantern on guard carried. The train wasn’t going particularly fast, two hundred kilometers tops, but it would be more than enough to kill him.

"Alright." The guard leading them shoved open the car door and between his two guards Hanzo was dragged into the next car and dropped.

He collapsed gracelessly, and the door rolled shut behind him.

Hanzo barely cracked one eye open to find the body of his younger brother crumpled beside him.

"Wake ‘em up." A new voice. 

Almost before Hanzo could react, a sheet of frigid water crashed over him and he started and barked in alarm. Genji did the same, and they both swore with vitriolic malevolence and flinched up and back from the icy water running over the floor beneath them.

The guards were laughing, one swinging an empty bucket. Hanzo shook water out of his eyes and chased his dripping hair back and Genji snarled, reached for a sword that he didn't have and cursed with even more belligerence than Hanzo.

"Keep them down, on their knees," one voice, still laughing called over the others.

Well, so much for playing dead and listening in and being carried everywhere. Hanzo scowled as the guards around him shoved him and Genji up slightly, onto their knees side by side. 

The car looked a little like a briefing room. Tables lined both walls under the dark windows, and there were more lanterns here than Hanzo had seen previously. Paper was everywhere. Maps and diagrams and engineering documents and crates of tall books shoved under the tables, notes taped to the windows. Above the most crowded table, a map of playing cards and three colours of string was spreading over one window.

It was also busy, six people in all, four guards leveling rifles at them, a man leaning over the crowded table in the back with an old hat, and a woman with a kepi cap, a duster and holding a riding crop. She would have been taller than Hanzo even if he'd been standing.

"State your name." The woman, former military if Hanzo had to guess, glared down at him with pale blue eyes.

Hanzo kept quiet and still, Genji shifted and muttered a brief but heartfelt obscenity.

"Your names," the woman's voice dropped, and Hanzo realized with sudden perfect certainty, that this woman was fully capable of beating them both to death with her riding crop.

"Hanzo, this is Genji." Hanzo tipped his head at his brother.

"What brought you to our-" the woman started, then Genji started up.

"And who are you exactly?" Genji, as belligerent as it was humanly possible to be, interrupted the woman with his head cocked back.

_ He's going to get beaten with that crop and if we survive this it's going to leave a welt that will last for days _ , Hanzo thought. It was exhausting bringing his brother on infiltration missions.

"Quiet." The riding crop flicked out, faster than Hanzo would have suspected she was capable of moving and there was a clap as it nicked Genji's jaw.

He rocked slightly where he knelt and glared up at her, unblinking, with blood on his chin.

"Excuse him, he has no manners to speak of," Hanzo said into the ringing silence following the snap of the crop, "We're bounty hunters and we were led to believe you have our quarry in your warehouse."

That caught the woman sufficiently off guard that she broke Genji's glare and blinked at Hanzo instead. "Bounty hunters."

"The diamonds I was carrying was half upfront." Hanzo gave a one sided little shrug. "The crates I was going through when you found me were large enough to store a body."

She looked at him a little more directly. Hanzo had been carrying a black market currency, and hadn't stolen or touched Deadlock's cargo. Hanzo and Genji had come alone and they weren't heavily armed or armored. And what would be more perplexing to her, Hanzo knew that no one had followed up on the warehouse where he had been taken. They were here alone and the woman knew that perfectly well by now.

"What's your quarry?" she asked. She was apparently finished letting Genji antagonize her, and he sat quietly beside Hanzo.

Hanzo shrugged and felt water drip out of his hair and down the back of his collar. He scowled and forced supreme disinterest as he described Reyes. "Man, late sixties, 6'4" with a black coat and twin shotguns. If you have him, I have a buyer and am prepared to talk terms."

The mention of a buyer made the woman prick up her ears at him. Hanzo assumed it would. Gangsters are always looking to expand wherever they could. Money was always a great distraction in these situations.

"Terms? We've got you and your partner on a spit. We just want to know where to light the fire." The woman cocked a half smile at him, thoughtfully tapping her crop against her leg.

"You've already got the downpayment we were given." Hanzo scowled at her. Cold and soaking wet, it was easy to sound irritated. "Any terms I’d give you wouldn't be insignificant."

"What makes you think we have your quarry?"

Hanzo covered for a moment of hesitation and shrugged. He was having to talk a lot faster than he could think, or plan, and he'd been trained in this but he still wasn't good at it. "He has enemies. They pooled resources to put a bounty on him that could attract our attention." Hanzo tipped his head towards Genji. "We tracked him to his safe house near here before we learned that he'd disappeared."

Which was true, and had been one of the worst days of Hanzo's life. Reyes was the man with the answers, the strategy, the poise and the information. Reyes had taken Hanzo and Genji in when they had fled, bloody and desperately trying to avoid assassination almost fifteen years ago. He was Blackwatch, and he had kept it going even as Overwatch had toppled years ago. Without him, Hanzo, Genji and the other operatives had no idea how to go on.

"So you started pawing through our cache," the woman finished for him. "Thought you could source a side deal with the weapons we're carrying? Maybe lay some traps on the way out?"

"No." The thought of Reyes vanishing into the jaws of a gang capable of evading them for months made him snap at her. "We're here for our bounty--"

"You're here for Gabriel Reyes."

Hanzo's mouth snapped shut and he froze. Beside him, Genji rocked back slightly on his knees and looked at Hanzo automatically.

Reyes had been functioning under one of his aliases when he had vanished in Deadlock territory. More troubling, Gabriel Reyes was a dead name. No one should even know it.

The man who had been standing silently behind their inquisitor staring at a table full of paper straightened, and turned to step into the light of the lantern.

The woman in the kepi hat stepped back to make room for him. He was taller than her, with an old Stetson shadowing his face and a brass belt buckle of Deadlock's winged skull. He stood easy before them, his hands on his belt and the sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled up to his elbows. Aside from the chest plate and some re-enforced chaps, he didn't look armored, and aside from a single gun on his hip, he didn't seem armed.

"Ain’t that right. It's Hanzo Shimada, ain't it? And your brother Genji." The man looked between Hanzo and Genji as he spoke. When he went on, his voice was soft, "Blackwatch must be in a hell of a state with their leader and two lieutenants missing."

Hanzo bit his lip hard. Fortunately Genji didn't struggle with utterance like his brother and spat deftly on the wooden floor.

"Fuck," he said, in a round, expressive way that made Hanzo and Genji's feelings very clear.

The man laughed, a real one that tipped him forward briefly. "Sure, that about sums you two up nicely. Apologize for the run around with my lieutenant here but I wanted to know just what you boys wanted us to think you were doing. The diamonds were a nice touch, thank you for that."

"Our pleasure," Genji snapped back. "Don't spend them all in one place. Who the hell are you."

"Jesse McCree." The man tipped his hat at them. "I run Deadlock."

Hanzo's chest tightened painfully. He had been hunting Deadlock for over a year and hadn't found anything about them. He had only found the edges of a black hole of money and weapons and drugs into which Hanzo couldn't see anyone or anything. And now he was staring at their leader on a secret train under the desert of New Mexico, with no way out and no way up.

"You're the leader of Deadlock?" Genji sputtered, again, somehow able to speak when his brother couldn't do more than stare. Genji seemed to sit back, and turned to Hanzo and spoke hurried Japanese in an undertone, "Were you expecting someone scarier? Because I was expecting someone scarier."

Hanzo shut his eyes briefly and hoped Jesse McCree didn’t know a single word of Japanese. It was quiet inside the train car. Ahead of them, the train’s engine roared and the car shook around them and the doors rattled on their sliders and no one inside the car said a word. When he opened his eyes, Jesse McCree was watching him, his eyes bright in the shadow of his hat.

"What makes you say we're Blackwatch," Hanzo growled at last. "Blackwatch was disbanded when Overwatch fell."

"Ha, yeah I heard that one too." McCree smiled down at them. "But I've been keeping track. Partly sentimentality, if I'm bein' honest. Gabriel Reyes nearly recruited me a good few years ago. I like to keep tabs on the people who've seen the man, the myth, the legend." He held his arms out, presenting himself.

Genji snorted but Hanzo didn't.

"So you kept up with Reyes. Why me? We've never met." Hanzo was still stuck on the use of his old name. Neither he nor Genji used their clan name anymore. They had effectively distanced themselves from it, and made sure that when they tore their former clan apart, stories and rumours of the young heirs to the clan dying went far and wide.

"No," McCree agreed. "I just like keeping tabs on you."

He smiled, slow and easy and genuine. Hanzo scowled, tensing.

"You've been after me over a year. Damn near caught up a few times. You know how fast I had to move to stay ahead of you? Wasn't two weeks after you started your investigation into my little gang that I had to do a little investigation of my own. You set me back more than a year during your hunt. You made an impression on me, Hanzo."

At least the year hadn't been entirely wasted. And apparently it was true that if you stare into an abyss of money and weapons and drugs and criminal activity so sophisticated it doesn't exist, something stares back.

Hanzo wasn't expecting the something to be someone like Jesse McCree though.

"Holy shit," Genji muttered to him in Japanese. "Brother, you pissed off Deadlock."

"Now I wouldn't say pissed off," McCree said in English. "Just interested.” 

Hanzo huffed out a sigh and closed his eyes briefly. So much for the man not knowing Japanese. 

McCree went on, talking through a grin, “No one's come after me in decades. Anyone who knows about Deadlock is either dead or knows better. You though, you came straight for me and you've never taken a prisoner in your life." McCree chuckled, paused and then his gaze barely flicked to Genji. "Well, almost never."

It was enough. Hanzo tensed again, hands closing into fists and he barely managed to stop himself from reaching out to shield Genji from McCree's interest. Genji had gone quiet and perfect still for once.

"Where's Reyes," Hanzo snapped.

"Two cars past me," McCree answered promptly. "He's resting."

"Resting," Hanzo said flatly. 

In the same instant that Genji rose up on his haunches, back straight and teeth showing.

"If you hurt him--"

The butt of a rifle slammed into the back of Genji's neck and he dropped forward, stunned and silent and Hanzo rounded furiously on the guard that had attacked him with blue fire crackling up his left arm.

"Enough," Jesse McCree snapped, his voice cracked out over the general noise, shockingly forceful after speaking so quietly before. The four guards rising up with weapons and surrounding Hanzo instantly froze and shied away, their eyes on their leader.

"Fucker," Genji hissed. He was on his knees with his forehead on the wooden floorboards, both hands cradling the back of his neck.

Hanzo found no one to fight in the guards around him. They'd slunk back like beaten dogs, their rifles held at ease over their chests. He swallowed. They were all tall, built people and Hanzo hadn't gone down easy when they'd found him in the warehouse but he had gone down. Genji had as well, but these brutes would clearly obey their leader to whatever end. 

"You alright?" Hanzo reluctantly let the guards off, the blue fire flickering before he let it go out, and touched his brothers back.

"He's not hurt," McCree answered Genij's question. His voice was soft again. "Reyes is just obtuse."

"Not untrue," Genji allowed, still face down, apparently milking this injury for all it was worth.

"Why did you take him?" Hanzo snapped. "You knew we'd come after him."

"No, actually I didn't think you would. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you did but I didn’t think you’d be able to." McCree shifted his weight and tipped his head back a little. The tawny glow from the lamp touched the scruff of beard on his jaw. He eyed Hanzo speculatively for a moment, then whatever decision he had been trying to make snapped into place inside him and he put his head down again. "Brenda, Lily, take Genji to Reyes, keep them together and answer any questions they got. You three, take off."

"Boss." Three guards nodded and left, heading back towards the car with the bunks and the decks of playing cards. 

Genji glanced at Hanzo, barely scraping his face off the floor to look at him, and Hanzo barely shrugged back. Neither of them knew what was happening anymore.

"I can walk," Genji snapped as the first guard approached him. The woman in the kepi cap had her crop tucked into her belt and stood a little past McCree. Slowly, Genji got to his feet and swayed perilously as the train rocked.

Hanzo wasn't sure if that was an act, but caught Genji's glance and barely nodded to him as Genji was brought past McCree towards the front of the train.

The door rattled open, the noise and warmth and wind of the rushing train poured in, and the door slid shut.

Hanzo was alone in the train car with Deadlock’s commander. 

"You didn't think we'd come after Reyes?" Hanzo prompted quietly.

"Sure did not," McCree replied. He studied Hanzo for another second, then went on "You best believe I know you a good deal more about you than you know about me. So take that into consideration will you? I’m the one taking a risk here. Stand up."

"What?" Hanzo was caught off guard by the simple request. McCree didn't look armed, just the single, heavy looking six shooter on his right hip, but that didn't mean he wasn't dangerous.

"Up, I said." McCree grinned. "’Less you like being on your knees, darling."

Hanzo snarled briefly at him, and was up on his feet in one motion.

McCree stepped back, keeping distance now they were both on their feet and tipped his head to invite Hanzo over. "This now, this here." He gestured to the cat's cradle of string and paper on the window over the crowded work table. "You see what this is?

Hanzo looked up at the window, blinked, took a couple steps over to it and blinked again. Most of the notes were actually cards from a deck. The Ace of Clubs with  _ Reyes  _ written over it was taped up with two other cards side by side under it. The King of Diamonds with  _ Hanzo  _ and the Jack of Clubs with  _ Genji _ . All three cards were connected in black string, and a few other cards were connected as well with the names of other operatives. The second network was in red string, larger and more comprehensive, with the only unnamed card at its head being the Jack of Spades. The third network was in purple string, and headed by the Queen of Spades with  _ Sombra? _ written across it. The network was the largest by a long shot, but the cards mostly had variations of  _???!?  _ written over them.

A few red threads reached into the purple network, and a few purple threads reached back. A red string went from Jack of Spades to Hanzo’s King of Diamonds, and a black string went from Reyes' card to the Jack of spades and a red one returned. A long purple thread connected Sombra to the space between Reyes, Hanzo and Genji. The tape that held it had a little plastic sword hanging off it, some little party favor you might find in a drink somewhere tacky.

There were no black strings working into the purple network.

"I thought with Reyes gone, Sombra would move on Blackwatch." McCree touched the little purple plastic sword hanging between Reyes, Hanzo and Genji. "Thought for sure she’d use this as her chance."

Hanzo was staring at the entire network spread over the window. It was huge, and he only knew a handful of the names. He had no idea what or who Sombra was. 

He didn't ask McCree anything. If a man who had spent his life making a criminal enterprise that could span the world and have no one know of its existence chose to explain himself, he could do so on his own damn terms.

"I was ready for it," McCree went on, a little slower. "I was going to use that as an opportunity to attack Talon." He was side by side with Hanzo now, and tapped the purple network.

There was a heavy white scar on McCree’s left arm, just below the elbow, so deep the muscle under the skin on either side looked slightly pitted. When he crossed his arms, his right hand hid the scar in a move that looked natural, but Hanzo was willing to bet he had learned.

"Why attack them?" Hanzo shifted uneasily. McCree was taller than him, and was standing closer than Hanzo expected him to and it didn’t feel like a threat. Hanzo had met and fought and killed a lot of gangsters in his time with Blackwatch. He had never come across anything like McCree, and he didn't understand what this could possibly be leading to.

"They're bigger than Deadlock." McCree leaned one hip on the table, and turned slightly to look at Hanzo, his arms still crossed. "A lot bigger. You think I was a shark in dark water? They're a damn Megalodon."

Hanzo could count the number of Deadlock agents on both hands. If Deadlock was a shark and Talon a Megalodon, what did that make Blackwatch? "So, you weren't expecting us." Which could be why Hanzo had made it as far into Deadlock territory as he got.

McCree snorted, some measure of chagrin making him turn his face away. "No, I was not. Guards didn't even know what to do when they found you. We were packing up for a trip so you and your brother got brought on with the rest of the dunnage."

"I appreciate being kept alive," Hanzo deadpanned.

"We ain't much for killing," said the international leader in black market weapon dealing without a trace of irony. "But it does present a valuable opportunity, for both of us."

Hanzo looked from the cat's cradle of string and playing cards to McCree. For the first time, he was close enough, and McCree was facing into the light and Hanzo could see his face clearly. Whatever scoff Hanzo had been intending died on his tongue. He felt his thoughts skid out and remembered he had been looking for this man for well over a year. And now here he was, close enough to touch.

“Blackwatch works in information,” McCree spoke into the quiet. “Since I took over, Deadlock's been accruing information. I ain't set to act on most of it, but you are. You might not need what I have to tell you right now, but you will. When Talon comes for Blackwatch, you're going to need my help."

Holy fuck, Hanzo thought, he wants to make a deal with me.

He wished suddenly for his brother's gift of speech. Lacking it, Hanzo swallowed and scowled and corrected his already stiff posture.

McCree held this time, and gazed quietly back at Hanzo.

"What exactly are you suggesting?" Hanzo broke the silence, taking his turn at it. He couldn't keep eye contact with McCree for very long. It was unnerving in a way he didn’t want to think of and made his heart misbehave.

"All three of you go back to Blackwatch with all the information I have on Talon, and you check it out. When you know they're no paper tiger, you can act, attack or control or whatever it is you fella's do with threats like them, I don't care. In the meantime, you leave me and my operation alone."

"Unacceptable," Hanzo said automatically.

"You three go  _ free _ ," McCree clarified. "And you get--"

"And you vanish," Hanzo snapped. "Again."

"Took me over a decade to disappear the first time," McCree replied. "You think this tunnel we're in came easy?"

Hanzo refused to be put off. "You're not leaving, you're under arrest."

McCree burst out laughing briefly and had to steady himself against the table. "Arrest? You realize you're captured, don't you, Hanzo? You’re in no position to be making arrests. You’re in a bind here."

"So are you," Hanzo retorted. "As long as I'm here you're limited as to what you can do. You didn't hurt Reyes and you didn't let your soldiers hurt us. You brought us with you because you had no idea what Talon was doing but you knew we'd be in danger if you left us behind. You protected us." The realization hit Hanzo as he spoke the words.

McCree's laughter was gone, and he was watching Hanzo with keen brown eyes that glinted amber in the lamp light. The train shook and rattled as they went around a curve in the line. They stood staring at each other, and Hanzo fought to get his breathing under control.

"Well hell, Hanzo, you're not wrong," McCree murmured. His right thumb was running back and forth over the ugly white scar on his left arm. "But consider this, you've spent a year hunting any trace of Deadlock. You've got an idea what we're capable of. I'm telling you straight out, Talon scares me. I need you and Blackwatch alive and killin' if I'm going to get my beauty sleep."

He doesn't need it, Hanzo thought to himself, looking into McCree's brown eyes. The thought made him straighten up automatically. His teachers had instilled in him early and often, that when a lapse in focus was detected, pain followed. McCree was threatening to become a major lapse in focus.

"Hanzo?" McCree tipped his head again.

"I'm addressing you as a lieutenant of Blackwatch," Hanzo said, raking his austerity into a cold mask and staring McCree down with it. "Not as your prisoner. I'm prepared to talk terms with you." Especially since all he had to go on was that Deadlock’s almost unimaginable, untrackable power was all here, standing in front of him in the form of a scruffy man in a flannel shirt with sweet brown eyes and little smile for Hanzo. And if all that money and power and security and anonymity was threatened enough to save an organization that wanted him behind bars because he hoped they wouldd help him, Hanzo needed to listen. Hanzo needed to capitalize on this.

"Sure." McCree blinked. "Speak on, Lieutenant."

"Turn over all the information you have on Talon to my commander, co-lieutenant and myself, and explain your findings. When we're satisfied, Blackwatch will leave from the warehouse we were taken from. If we deem the threat you're referring to as such, we'll use your information to attack, however," and here Hanzo had to pause and force himself to relax his fists and breathe. "The threat you pose cannot be overlooked."

McCree looked like he was going to speak up and argue, so Hanzo went on like he hadn’t noticed.

"Additionally we'll require your ongoing assistance," Hanzo said, gathering his courage in both hands and feeling slightly breathless. "Therefore a member of Blackwatch will stay with Deadlock as a liaison."

Whatever McCree was going to say hit the back of his throat and choked him. He coughed, righted himself, opened his mouth, shut it again and finally managed, "Liaison?"

"Babysitter," Hanzo corrected himself as rudely as possible. "Someone will stay to study your operation and relay any relevant information to Blackwatch."

"Babysitter." McCree looked astonished and then slowly grew angry as he went on. "The hell you are. You bringing us a colouring book, too? No, absolutely not, I'm not handing my life's work and my entire gang over to one of your grunts and..."

"You don't have a choice," Hanzo cut him off sharply. McCree looked furious and Hanzo was good at ordering angry people to do as he told them. "If you could deal with Talon on your own, you wouldn't need Blackwatch, and if you didn't need us we'd already be dead."

The anger dropped out of McCree's face and he shut his mouth.

"And of course it wouldn't be a low ranked member of Blackwatch," Hanzo went on, scraping the bottom of his internal barrel for courage and grit and anything else that could help him force these words out. "It would be me."

McCree's carefully expressionless face was suddenly genuinely startled. He looked younger with his eyes wide and his mouth a little open. "You?"

"Of course." Hanzo scowled into his astonishment. "I know the most about your organization. I've been hunting you for over a year, you've said it yourself."

"You'd stay," McCree said, still astonished, still wide eyed. "You'd stay here, in Deadlock."

"I'll stay as your shadow," Hanzo corrected. "Relaying information about Talon and your gang."

"Oh, hell."

For the first time, McCree broke eye contact and ducked his head, one hand coming up to his hat and shoving it down slightly. It was a childish gesture, and one that seemed wholly unintended.

"Those are the terms," Hanzo pressed. He was captured in an enemy stronghold attempting to blackmail the leader of an international black market into giving him all the information Hanzo would need to tear him apart. And possibly another organization as well. If it existed. This was the stupidest thing he had ever said and the worst part was it might work.

"Hell," McCree said softly. "But, you'll stay?"

Hanzo suddenly caught McCree's gaze from under the brim of his hat, and stopped cold.

The light was low and yellow and the lamps were swinging slightly as the train rocked on its rails, and McCree wasn't quite hiding under his hat brim but it was pulled low.

And it wasn't enough to hide the fact that McCree was smiling at him.

"I," Hanzo started, realized he had spoken in Japanese, and referred to himself in the extreme informal, and tensed again. "I'd stay as Blackwatch's Lieutenant, their liaison."

"With me." McCree let his hand fall from his hat and tipped his head. The tawny light was on his neck and Hanzo glanced at the bare skin of his neck because it had gone slightly red.

"You're the leader of Deadlock." Hanzo managed to tear his eyes off McCree's neck and swallowed. "I've been looking for you for a year. I'm not letting you out of my sight now."

"Under arrest, huh?" McCree tipped his head and chuckled. "Well, I always knew Talon was gonna start a war. And they say war makes strange bedfellows."

There was a brief flicker as McCree glanced from Hanzo's eyes to his mouth, then back. Hanzo automatically corrected his posture.

"Alright, it's a deal." He pulled his glove off and held his right hand out between them.

It was scarred and calloused, and Hanzo took it, expecting the bone crushing grip of a man who made strong first impressions. Instead, McCree's hand was gentle but firm in his, and he smiled a little awkwardly when Hanzo looked up at him.

"A deal," Hanzo said, and caught himself before he smiled back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey if you liked this AU I wound up writing a whole fic about it for the 2018 McHanzo Big Bang! It's about trains and McCree leading Deadlock and Hanzo running Blackwatch with Reyes and Genji, and Hanzo and McCree falling in love it's called [Hell to Pay](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14118225/chapters/32531685), check it out if it's your thing! 
> 
> Many thanks to Windlion for suggesting this Canon Divergence, because hot damn I never thought of this but I love it?  
> Also so much gratitude to the awesome [emotionalmorphine](http://emotionalmorphine.tumblr.com/) for the amazing beta reading and being incredibly patient and giving fantastic edits!!  
> [I'm on Tumblr! ](http://leoandlancer.tumblr.com) If you'd care to check it out I'd love to hear from you! (๑°꒵°๑)･*♡


	3. Red/Blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This should be ABSOLUTELY be chapter 4, however, the Undercover/Downtime chapter which should precede this one is still in it's rebellious phase of wanting to be a multi-chapter mission fic, so it's on a time out and will be along shortly.  
> I hope you enjoy~

There were a number of things that happened very quickly once Hanzo agreed to join Overwatch. Hanzo had spent a long time travelling, a long time jumping over and between time zones, struggling to get money or struggling to keep it without drawing thieves. He hadn't really held a schedule while he’d been on the run from nothing more than his own past and a marginally sublethal amount of guilt.

And a few dozen paid assassins, but they rarely counted. They were, if Hanzo had to admit it, actually welcome since they were his primary source of income. Mercenaries died just as easily as anyone else. They were always well paid when they came after him, and they usually carried equipment that were easy to trade in any county.

However, Overwatch changed things in his life in ways he couldn't have expected. The most glaring was the proximity to his only surviving relative that he'd narrowly failed to murder. That would have made the shared meal times awkward enough, but that wasn't all. His role as a member of a team was next to impossible to internalize. He was used to working alone and it wasn't easy to think of five other people at any time, least of all when he was fighting for his life. He was well practiced at fighting people who really, genuinely wanted to kill him, but he was not used to those people having equal or greater skill at killing than he had.

Within the first two weeks of playing through the simulated battles on Watchpoint Gibraltar, Hanzo found himself seriously considering assassinating Hana Song in her bed for eating his dragons in battle. It was infuriating. He knew that her mech was the pride of South Korea's robust defence forces, and he knew that its defence matrix would nullify anything that was shot into it. He did not realize it could nullify two ancestral dragon guardians the very instant they leapt from his bow string.

Over the following week, his hit-list grew to include Winston, who would jump to whatever airy vantage point Hanzo painstakingly climbed to and harass him. Then Widowmaker, who assumed she was a better sniper simply because she used some crass rifle and he could spend half the match attempting to shoot her while she tried to shoot him. The two of them could spend minutes caught in the ludicrous, ageless side to side dance of two snipers fixated on each other. He added Mei to the list on principal that anyone who stared you dead in the eye after freezing you solid before driving an icicle into your skull couldn't be allowed to live, especially if she continued to throw ice-walls up to ruin his sight lines. Roadhog and Orisa kept yanking him from his perches and piling unfamiliar damage into him that he couldn't easily counter. Zarya made the list when she went from 0% charge to 100% after she and her partnered Mercy walked out of the path of his dragons, both women grinning at him from inside their protective bubbles.

Reaper made the list purely out of spite; he became a wraith and avoided most killing blows which infuriated and unnerved Hanzo. Sombra made the list after she realized where he'd been camping one round and happily encircled him with hacked health packs, and killed him everytime he attempted to make a break for healing. Pharah made the list for being a pest who could out-damage him and out-distance most of his shots. Lucio made the list when he contested a stuck payload for over a minute and a half on his own while Hanzo fired shot after shot into him and he ignored the arrows that began to fringe his shoulders. Symmetra made the list when she ringed his perch in turrets and left, and when he dropped down to advance, was fried in mid air and died before he hit the ground. No one even saw him die.

Genji should have made the hit list for being able to climb anywhere Hanzo could and being capable of deflecting his arrows and send them straight back into his face. However, Hanzo felt awkwardly unwilling to wish further interaction with his brother outside of their matches, and avoided him whenever possible.

McCree made the list early, but not because of their practice battles. 

McCree had been something of an enigma to Hanzo. Hanzo knew he'd been in Blackwatch, knew he'd been trained by Reyes in the golden days, knew he'd been a gangster and killer and he'd been on the run since Blackwatch had fallen. All of that information did not prepare Hanzo for the person McCree actually was though, and so Hanzo had avoided him more and more carefully as time went by.

Actually, Hanzo avoided McCree for a few reasons as time went on, and all of them were hopelessly, pathetically foolish.

And undoubtedly one-sided. 

McCree, however, made no special arrangements to avoid Hanzo, and had no compunction going one-on-one with Hanzo in battle.

He had been defending the first objective on Volskya when Hanzo lost his patience for the last time with McCree. He had been at full draw, standing with five enemies edged in red before him and the fury and heat and eagerness of the dragons lighting the tattoo on his arm. He had been about to release them. He had been about to watch them leap from his bow and kill five attackers and defend this idiotic point on his own and prove he didn't need a team anyway.

"Now hold up."

The flashbang grenade sailed over Hanzo’s shoulder from behind and exploded slightly to his right. Hanzo started, stunned and reeling and unable to think, or plan, or move, unable to feel the dragons or send them on their rampage. McCree was behind him, already contesting the objective, and shot Hanzo twice in the head.

Hanzo dropped into the defender’s respawn after the first point had already been taken. His team lost the second point after a full round and over thirty frantic seconds in overtime, and Hanzo refused to admit it was probably his fault. 

Hanzo had abandoned the second point and his team and spent the entire remainder of the match hunting McCree down and killing him. Usually while McCree was crossing from the attacker’s spawn room to the second point. It had been indescribably petty of him, but Hanzo had used his dragons on three different occasions to kill McCree, and only McCree, in the long stretch of time they had to hold the second point. Hanzo himself had died and died and died in that time, diving stupidly through or over the enemy team, and traded himself for killing McCree every time.  

It hadn't been worth it, in the end. Hanzo woke up in the simulation pod after the match flustered with frustration and hot with embarrassment, with his hands trembling slightly from tension. Sessions like that one were the worst part of his new life here. They were the sessions where he lost control and where his abilities couldn’t be enough to compensate for bad decisions or poor placement. They reminded him how little he belonged here. They reminded him that he worked better alone, and he worked better defending himself, not a place, or an idea, or other people.

It reminded him that he was good enough only as long as the people he fought weren't. It was a reminder that he'd never mastered his temper, never mastered the tactics his father had tried so hard to drill into him. Hanzo was supposed to have been a war lord, the head of an organization that was ancient and wealthy and dangerous and instead Hanzo acted out like a petulant child with a grudge and enough skills to be dangerous. Just not enough skills to compensate for the rest of him.

It reminded him that he wasn't a professional. He wasn't on the same level as the others. He wasn't like McCree.

He could hear the simulation pods opening around him. The other 24 members of the newly made Overwatch, heroes and misfits and oddities stretching and yawning and climbing out to take their evening meal and rest.

Hanzo clenched his jaw, felt the ache in his arms and legs from the tension the virtual reality brought him.

"Training sessions have been successfully completed." Athena's cool voice spoke in his ear then went on. "Will you disengage?"

"No." Hanzo was looking at the inside of his visor. It shaded his eyes, made the transition from the cool interior of his own mind and the reality of the outside world a little easier to adjust to. "Custom game. Skirmish. Bring me to..." He had been about to say Hanamura, but stopped himself in time. The Hanamura in Athena's data banks wasn't his home, he didn't belong there either. "Bring me to Horizon."

The darkness swarmed up from the edges of his vision.

"Now arriving at Horizon, Lunar Colony," Athena announced.

Hanzo opened his eyes and found himself in the defender’s spawn. It was always a little unnerving to drop into Athena’s virtual reality, but you got used to it quickly. 

He crossed the wide loading bay and trotted up into the airy room where the towers of gardens rose in misty green columns, and computer banks flickered the occasional sleepy light at him. He bypassed the play room with the hanging tires and rock climbing hand holds, and climbed up the stairs towards the overseer’s eyrie.

Even knowing all he did about Athena's simulated reality, even remembering that he'd been here before, it still took him a long thoughtful minute to step into the airlock and out onto the surface of the moon.

All sound died. There shouldn’t be air out here either, but in the simulation he never had trouble breathing. 

He hopped carefully forward, towards the slope where the huge rovers were parked, and drifted silently down until he left his cloven footprints in the dust again. He enjoyed the weightlessness, the huge indifference of the sky above him, the quiet. He enjoyed the fiery brilliance of the stars around him, enjoyed gazing up at the round disk of the earth.

It was nice, he reflected, settling down on his knees at the edge of the drop off, to feel that everything was muted and small and singular. It was nice to be alone in a place so few people could ever experience. Nice to be the most vivid, lively thing between here and the surface of the Earth. He was a blue and gold creature of guilt and regret and frustration and loneliness that could scream his sorry heart out into the very vacuum of space and hear nothing.

He didn't, not this time. But it was nice to have the option.

It wasn't a sound that made him aware he wasn't alone anymore. More like some brief change in pressure that made him turn and blink at a new blaze of red against the stark white of the moon base and the blackness beyond it.

McCree was drifting towards him, biting his lip in concentration with his arms held out a little as if for balance, the red serape billowing up around and behind him. He touched down and hopped towards Hanzo again, another big stride, drifting silently ten feet up and then down at an lazy, easy speed. The red of the serape looked huge and brilliant in the clean emptiness around McCree.

He was edged in red, an attacker to the blue of Hanzo's own outline. Hanzo's hand settled on his bow, tensing to rise, but McCree just waved to him and when he landed in the dust, stood with his head cocked a little uncertainly at Hanzo, and greeted him again.

No sound, but the now familiar little finger gun salute from McCree didn't need it. Hanzo eased his grip on his bow, and didn't bother to respond. He sat another few beats in the quiet of the moon, unsure what to do or where to look, unsure why McCree was here with his gun and no grudge. 

Hanzo tried to keep his breathing even, and looked up at the the huge spray of the milky way, at the bright face of the Earth and then back to McCree. McCree, burning red with the sterile white of the base and the yawning empty sky behind him. McCree, standing patient and unafraid with his red serape looking huge as it settled around him. Jesse goddamn McCree, who Hanzo had never been able to face head on out of battle.

It wasn't jealousy. Not really. The irritation Hanzo had cherished towards McCree since they'd met was irrational and Hanzo knew it was petty. But Hanzo was tired of having a hit list, tired of being an outcast, tired of  _ making  _ himself an outcast. He was tired of living with the ghost of his dead brother and the automaton that claimed to be Genji. Tired of focusing on McCree in more and more matches at any provocation. Tired of being the worst thing in his own life. Tired of being the worst thing in McCree's day to day.

McCree looked like he was about to sit so Hanzo pushed himself up sharply, rising up off the ground and reaching out to take the trailing edge of McCree's serape and tug himself around so they were facing one another. McCree followed him, showing some uncertainty and maybe resignation as he kept them face to face and rose up with Hanzo.

The serape floated out again, and Hanzo's own robes, the dark blue of his discarded sleeve, the gold of his scarf, trailing up to mirror the red. McCree tipped his head and looked up at Hanzo in the silent, harsh white light of the moon, and very carefully cupped Hanzo's elbow and drew him in.

Hanzo knew he wasn't good with people. He'd been trained to view people as assets or enemies and to be a lord over his assets and an assassin to his enemies. He knew he wasn't a good ally, wasn't a good teammate, wasn't a good person and he knew well now that McCree was all of those things. McCree was good enough that he had come to find a man who'd killed him twelve times today over a perceived slight during a training exercise.

For…some reason that Hanzo couldn't bring himself to consider. 

Hanzo swallowed and studied the bright red serape fanning out in the naked light of the sun with white and black all around them, just as Hanzo’s dark blue sleeve spread on their other side. They turned together as they floated up, with Hanzo hands making fists in the wool of McCree's serape at his chest, and McCree's right hand holding Hanzo's wrist. They kept each other close. McCree still looked uncertain, maybe as uncertain as Hanzo felt, but there was something like wonder in his eyes and Hanzo didn’t know why. 

Hanzo had never had Genji's gift for speech. He'd never learned to communicate, only to issue orders, and McCree deserved better than that. Deserved better and Hanzo didn't have the skill or the temperament to explain that he was used to being sure. Hanzo was used to being powerful and lost and wild and beyond consequences because he was used to being nothing.

Hanzo didn't know how to say any of that. He didn't know how to explain why he only ever fixated on McCree.

It didn't matter that he didn't have the words right now, though. They were drifting through space, a few feet above the surface of the moon with no sound to hear or words to mess up the delicacy of the feeling Hanzo didn't know how to express. They were just drifting, one red, one blue, both trailing gold and turning together very slowly, until Hanzo felt the warmth of the red wool on his arm, and his sleeve brushed up against McCree's shoulder.

It didn't matter that Hanzo couldn't find the words to explain himself, because McCree had come looking for him anyway, had come to the one place Hanzo could go that words wouldn't matter.

McCree gently touched the edge of Hanzo's jaw, just with the tips of his fingers. The metal of his prosthetic hand was cool and steady and his eyes were soft and a little hopeful. Hanzo watched McCree just as carefully and tightened his grip on the serape and pulled him a little closer until they were almost chest to chest. He tipped his head and McCree's hand slipped into his hair, and Hanzo closed the bright, soundless gap between them.

Hanzo kissed McCree with his eyes shut and his heart thudding fast and heavy against his throat. He hoped he could explain this later. McCree deserved a real explanation, McCree deserved...

Hanzo drew back sharply. Hot anxiety and the familiar self-doubt already clawing up the back of his neck. He was suddenly ashamed of himself, and startled by his own boldness. He was mostly unwilling to consider exactly how much McCree deserved someone better than an ornery archer with poor communications skills and a history of killing people even if he loved them.

That wasn’t intentional. The words formed on Hanzo’s tongue and in the silence of space he couldn’t speak them. It was a lie anyway, but maybe McCree would believe it, and Hanzo could pretend until he believed it too.

But McCree didn't push him away or let him go, and when Hanzo managed to look at him again, McCree was flushed and his lips were parted and he looked at Hanzo like he never could have expected Hanzo to do a thing like that. Then his eyes cut to the side and down and Hanzo looked away, too. He studied the frayed red edge of the serape with ferocious attention while his heart pounded and his hands shook as they held on more tightly to McCree.

_ Stupid _ , Hanzo berated himself with the familiar line of thought.  _ Reckless, selfish, impulsive _ , his mind went on while Hanzo agreed wholeheartedly. He had no idea how he was going to run from this, but he knew he would have to.

Hanzo started slightly when McCree's hand slipped up a little further into Hanzo's hair, under the ponytail and its trailing scarf and gently pulled Hanzo around to look at him. Hanzo found McCree looking steadily up at him, less uncertain now, more like himself and still with that soft wonder that made Hanzo’s chest ache. McCree bit his lip just a little, and his gaze dropped to Hanzo's mouth for a hot second then flicked back up.

_ Oh _ , said a tiny surprised voice at the back of Hanzo's mind.  _ Not so stupid _ .

McCree's lips were still parted, his red serape floating out around them like bright red wings to Hanzo's blue, and McCree made a tiny, barely contained movement, and Hanzo only saw it because he'd been holding his breath and waiting for it.

This time they pulled each other in so fast Hanzo barely had time to tip his head and catch McCree's mouth with his. Hanzo felt the little jerk as their serene, slow descent through low gravity hitched with the brief, aborted strength of Hanzo yanking McCree against him with both fists. McCree gave a tiny little noise of relief that Hanzo could feel instead of hear, and his fingers curled in Hanzo's hair until McCree could pull Hanzo down into him, into a kiss that was already close and messy and surprisingly desperate. Then McCree opened his mouth under Hanzo, and he licked up into the kiss and it went hot and wet in another agonizing heartbeat.

Hanzo wasn't sure if he'd pulled McCree in too hard, or if McCree had arched up into him, but they were pressed together from chest to thigh and Hanzo just wanted to keep drifting like this. Wanted to stay weightless and warm with McCree pressing eagerly up against him, with their mouths hot and wet in a kiss that neither wanted to break. Wanted to keep their red and blue and gold wings spread out around them as they floated slowly back to their mismatched footprints in the white dust of the moon.

McCree bit Hanzo's lip and the fingers of his metal prosthetic twined gently in Hanzo's hair and tugged. Hanzo gave a sharp little exhale, gut deep longing barely overriding his natural reserve, his certainty that Hanzo wasn't good for people and that McCree deserved better. Hanzo would have whispered McCree's name if either of them could have heard it, just to see how it sounded in his mouth, just to try and give his unfamiliar longing its source. 

Their feet touched down into the dust, McCree first and then Hanzo half a beat after him, and they both would have staggered had they not already nearly been weightless. As it was, they barely broke apart, keeping their hands tight on one another, keeping their eyes shut and their mouths so close their lips brushed whenever they moved. Close enough the breath that shouldn't exist on the surface of the moon felt hot between them.

The trailing serape and the sleeve of Hanzo's robe trailed down around them, red and blue and gold in the bright void under the black star-shot sky. Hanzo and McCree stood close and still in the centre, unwilling to break apart.

McCree’s hand, his real one, flesh and warm brown skin and old scars, slid up Hanzo’s wrist until he could hold Hanzo's hand. Hanzo could feel the lines of old scars on his thumb, then nothing when McCree brushed over the callouses on his palm. 

It was so easy to kiss him. Hanzo tipped his head and their lips met and Hanzo felt like he could have been doing this, feeling this breathless, uncertain joy since they'd met. He slipped his hand around McCree's and tried to restrain himself from moving with the desperation that was chewing at the inside of his chest. He tried to rein himself in and reminded himself that this wasn't the same as talking, that this wasn't all McCree deserved. An explanation was still in order, an apology, a moment where McCree would see, if he was looking for it, the aching vulnerability in Hanzo that came from being alone for so long without wanting to be.

McCree's hand stroked down out of Hanzo’s hair, careful with his ponytail, gentle on the back of his neck. McCree's mouth was warm and soft and just as careful this time as Hanzo was, their beards catching on one another with every movement, the shared heat of their mouths almost shocking to Hanzo.

The serape and the trailing sleeve swung down slowly around them and McCree barely pulled away, just far enough that he could look at Hanzo with unfamiliar surprise and relief and the same wonder Hanzo had seen in his eyes before. Hanzo realized he probably looked about the same, for hopefully the same reasons.

McCree eased away, drew the hand from the back of Hanzo's neck, and Hanzo fought to stop himself as he unconsciously moved after him. McCree's hand tightened in his, and tugged him gently towards the airlock, a return to air and noise and gravity.

They took one weightless step together and Hanzo balked, freezing up slightly because he wasn't sure what he was going to say, wasn't sure how his inability to interact with people if they weren't enemies or assets would hurt McCree, only he was certain it would.

McCree just looked back at him. Still holding his hand, waiting patiently for Hanzo to make the next move.

There should be more for him here, Hanzo thought desperately. He thought of Genji as a child, a little brother who had adored Hanzo despite everything, right until the end. He thought of the place he'd been groomed for by a cabal of war lords who had treated him like an asset and made him feel proud to be one. He thought of all the ways he didn't know how to tell McCree what he felt, and could never seem to build a scaffold of words around to support it. McCree deserved more than what Hanzo could give him.

_ So be more _ , the tiny voice in the back of his head stopped Hanzo before he could pull his hand out of McCree's _. Tell him so. _

Hanzo reached out and tugged McCree back towards him. It was almost childish, something a bully would do just to see if he could, but McCree went easily with the red of his serape rising up after him. He closed the space between them and tipped his head and licked his lips a little apprehensively as he watched Hanzo. McCree made another little unwilling noise of relief, straight into Hanzo's mouth when they kissed, hot and hungry and everything still unsaid. But it was a place to start, there was enough understood here to start.

Hanzo kept his eyes closed when they reluctantly broke the kiss, and he let out a long silent breath when McCree tentatively stroked Hanzo's hair away from his face, and settled his hand on the back of Hanzo's neck again. The metal hand was strong enough to tear steel, Hanzo remembered as he shut his eyes and let out a breath, and it was unbelievably gentle on the back of his neck.

Hanzo didn't know the words yet and he couldn't say them here anyway, but he looked at the bright red wings of McCree's serape and the hopeful, relieved wonder on McCree's face and felt some of the tension locked in his gut ease in a way he'd never felt before. He could start, he wanted to learn, would start to be better. Apparently, something about him was enough for McCree, and that counted for more than Hanzo could have dared hope for. He could build from there, he could be enough. 

Hanzo nodded slightly, and together they went back inside the base.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed <3 I'll be posting the next fic on the Monday after next, Sept. 25, the first chapter of a multi chapter McHanzo Monster Hunter fic I've been working on for a few months in case you're interested!  
> Huge thanks to the very patient [Emotionalmorphine!](http://emotionalmorphine.tumblr.com) ʚ♡⃛ɞ(ू•ᴗ•ू❁) They beta read this chapter, fluff and drama and all.  
> I'm on [Tumblr!](http://leoandlancer.tumblr.com) Please come by and say hi if you're so inclined <3 Thank you again for reading. <3


End file.
